


In the Boneyard

by pearlcaddy



Series: Julie the Vampire Slayer [7]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Bittersweet Romance in Cemeteries, Established Relationship, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29572680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlcaddy/pseuds/pearlcaddy
Summary: “You don’t know what today is?” he asks softly.Julie is surprised to find Luke visiting the cemetery.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Series: Julie the Vampire Slayer [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977202
Comments: 46
Kudos: 184





	In the Boneyard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous/gifts).



> Title from "Boneyard" by Fink
> 
> This is more ficlet than fic. I'm filling [kiss prompts](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com/tagged/pearlcaddy-kiss-prompt) on [my tumblr](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com) and this one got a bit long, so I decided to share it here.
> 
> Prompt is for "Kissing tears from the other’s face"
> 
> For anyone following the timeline of the JtVS verse, this happens after [The Other Shoe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28586184) and before [A True Himbo Scholar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27150490).

**August 2020**

The thing about being the Slayer is that stumbling across her boyfriend in a cemetery isn’t unusual, nor is it immediately a sign that something is wrong. (Emotionally, that is. There are pretty good odds that it’s a sign of the apocalypse or a demon attack, but Luke tends to warn her about those in advance.)

So when Julie finds him at Sunnyside Cemetery while she’s out patrolling, she doesn’t immediately notice that anything is wrong until she gets close enough to see that he is 1) wearing the flannel jacket he only wears when he’s sad, and 2) his tears are lit up in the moonlight.

“Luke?”

He jumps at her approach and quickly wipes his face on his sleeve. “Uh…” There’s a second where it seems like he’s debating lying or playing it off, but then his shoulders sag and his lips twitch. “Hey.”

And it’s only then that she realizes that he’s in a familiar part of the cemetery.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming here?” She holds a tentative hand out to him, but he ignores it and wraps her into a tight hug instead.

“Yeah, I thought I wanted to do this one on my own,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

She rubs soothing circles into his back, heart seizing up at the sound of his sniffs in her ear. She’s all too conscious of her mother’s headstone watching them, and she’s acutely aware of the differences between Luke’s grief and hers. She has no idea why he’s here on this random day in August. Luke has memories of Rose that can trigger his grief and dates that ring with extra meaning for him. What Julie has is an empty, longing void that she desperately fills with scraps of other people’s memories and pain, an intense ache at an absence without specifics that are personal to her. Some days, when she watches her father burst into tears seemingly randomly over a recipe or a song, she almost feels like she has imposter syndrome over her own grief. As if she doesn’t know her own mother well enough to grieve her. A thought that makes her sick to her stomach.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks gently.

“I don’t know what to say. Especially not…” He rests his forehead on her shoulder and inhales heavily, like he’s drawing energy from her. “Not to you.”

“I like hearing about her, even if it’s sad,” she offers.

He pulls back abruptly, face wrinkling up. His mouth opens slightly and his eyes dart to Rose’s headstone, like he’s surprised to see it, before they flick back to her. “You don’t know what today is?” he asks softly.

As if she needs the reminder of all the things she doesn’t know. “Should I?” Her voice comes out with more edge than it probably should in the face of her grieving boyfriend.

His eyes squeeze up sadly and he tucks a loose curl behind her ear before he nods over at the headstone next to her mother’s.

_Oh._

It’s maybe odd that she hasn’t really looked at her own headstone before, but once she clawed her way out of her own coffin, she kind of stopped thinking about it. She was alive; therefore, in her mind, her headstone had vanished into the ether. And after being dead and having been with her mother in… whatever dimension that was, Rose’s grave stopped feeling as significant. Julie knew where her mother’s soul was, and it had nothing to do with this patch of ground.

She slides her eyes over to her own headstone, feeling acutely like…

… okay, it turns out Luke was right—it feels like she’s trying to get off on her own nudes, and she averts her eyes back to her boyfriend.

His face crumples under her scrutiny. “I know you’re _here_ , and maybe it’s weird to mourn the day you died, but…”

She slips her hand into his. “I still died. Coming back doesn’t change that.”

Gesturing their joined hands at the two headstones, he sighs. “Basically a parade of all the Slayers I failed.”

“Hey.” Voice stern, she snaps her eyes to his. “You didn’t fail me. I made my choice, and I would make it again.”

He winces. “Please don’t say that.”

“And you didn’t fail her.”

Shaking his head, he gestures hopelessly at her headstone, as if it’s evidence enough.

Julie studies him for a second. There’s a truth she’s hidden in her heart since she came back to life, a fact she’s debated telling him, weighing the pros and cons. But now feels like the time. “Luke, when I was… wherever I was, I felt her regret. I think she feels like she failed you, and I think that’s one of the last emotions she ever felt in her life.”

His face squeezes up, like he’s just eaten a lemon, and he shakes his head aggressively. “That’s bullshit,” he snaps in the direction of Rose’s headstone, as if he’s arguing with her mother directly. “She didn’t fail me.”

“Cool, we agree. So since I can’t tell _her_ that blaming herself for you two dying in the apocalypse is bullshit, I’m going to need you to hear me on it.”

But he huffs out an angry breath, biting his lip. “Jules, one dead Slayer is an accident. Two is real fucking careless.”

“Every other Watcher throughout history has had as many dead Slayers as they’ve had Slayers. It’s how the game works.” He winces, and she softens her voice. “But we changed the game.”

“What if it’s not enough? What if I’m…” He waves his hand at Julie’s empty grave, unable to speak for a moment. “What if I’m back here someday, and you’re in there?”

Julie’s gut churns. There’s nothing she can say to that, is there? No promises she can realistically make or keep, no pain or worry she can ease. All she can do is say what they always say to each other—that they’ll do their best to live in the moment and be as careful as they can—but right now, in the face of his very raw grief, it’s not something that will help.

His eyes tick over her face and he must read the sheer helpless on it, because he sighs and collapses his forehead against hers. For a moment, they just breathe together, pointless as his breaths are. Taking simple comfort in each other’s presence.

He clears his throat. “This is petty and it’s the least of my concerns, but the epitaph…”

Trying to swallow her own discomfort, she glances over at it.

_Treasured daughter_  
_Beloved sister_  
_Devoted friend_

_She saved the world.  
A lot._

“What about it?” she asks.

He slides both of his hands into hers. “None of them capture what you are to me.”

“What am I to you?” She tries to ask the question in a slightly playful tone, to coax a smile from him, but his face wobbles and tears start to run down his cheeks again.

“You’re my heart,” he croaks out, before fully breaking down, his head crumpling toward his chest.

A peculiar mix of joy at his overwhelming love, and pain at his fear and grief tugs sharply in her heart. She pops up onto the balls of her feet and wraps her arms around him, trying to hold him steady as his whole body wracks with sobs. Resting her head against his chest and clutching him as close as possible, she tries not to pay attention to his lack of a heartbeat.

She’s not sure how long she holds him, but her toes have gone numb and her calves are on the verge of seizing up by the time he slowly lifts his head. Clearly trying to reassure her, he forces a quick, pained smile her way. Catching his chin, she turns his face towards her and gently places a kiss over every single tear, wiping them away with her lips. His unnecessary breath shudders at her touch and the small smile he offers this time seems more genuine.

She finally eases down onto her feet, calves aching. “So, did you want to get a new headstone?”

He laughs wetly and shakes his head. “Nah, that thing was expensive.”

She shrugs. “We can fix the one I've got. I’m pretty good at vandalizing headstones.” He quirks an eyebrow at her but doesn’t ask further questions as he curls their hands together. “Is that what you wanted it to say? 'Luke’s heart?'” she tries to joke, desperate to lighten the mood.

But he twists up his face seriously and studies her. “I’m hoping that by the time you die, decades from now, there’s a more official title for what you are to me.”

“Darling Slayer?”

He eyes her with a look that’s not quite a smile but is somehow fiercer than one, and just shakes his head. Her heart catches on her ribs.

It’s silly, because nothing about their relationship is casual. It’s not a surprise that he’s serious about them, or how serious he is. But sometimes, for a couple seconds, when she’s standing in a cemetery next to her grave wrapped in the arms of her ghost Watcher on the second anniversary of her first death, she feels like a regular girl and it’s just nice to be reminded that her boyfriend is as all-in as she is.

“I hate your headstone,” she confesses.

“What would you change about it?”

“Update your deathday, for accuracy. And you deserve inscriptions. A whole list of them, like mine. And maybe… your last name?”

She forces herself to meet his eyes. The joy breaking through his tears is so bright that she almost wishes there were a vampire nearby, to see if they could be turned to dust with that smile that shines like the sun.

“You have a last name in mind?” he asks.

Rolling a coy shrug off her shoulder, she smiles. “I’m sure I could think of something.”

He presses his lips gently to her forehead and squeezes her close. When he finally lets her go, he chuckles humorlessly to himself.

“What?” she asks.

“We gotta stop having romantic moments in cemeteries. It’s getting to be _a thing._ ”

“Maybe.” She shrugs. “But it’s our thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> Julie's epitaph is largely taken from "The Gift"


End file.
